ATLANTA 
Steve Fisher is a genial, reserved, stoic man. He listens carefully to questions, then pauses in thoughtful reflection before answering. His voice rarely changes pitch or is tinged with animosity.

“I’m one of these guys,” he says, “where my glass is always half full.”

There is one exception. When Fisher discusses the events of 15½ years ago before he became San Diego State’s basketball coach, before he led a moribund program to the NCAA Tournament in four straight seasons, he doesn’t talk about leaving Michigan or moving on from Michigan or parting ways with Michigan.

“When I was fired at Michigan,” he says.

Not the softer, less jarring, more ambiguous alternatives. Not, when I was dismissed. Not, when I was let go. Not, when Michigan decided to move in a different direction.

When I was fired. There is an emphasis on the word, fired, with a biting accent on the f.

Michigan is back in the Final Four this weekend for the first time in 20 years, for the first time since Fisher and the Fab Five reached the championship game in consecutive seasons in 1992 and ’93, for the first time since he was — accent on the f — fired by Athletic Director Tom Goss amid a payment-to-players scandal that, an NCAA investigation later found, involved no direct culpability by Fisher.

He is in Atlanta. He’ll be in the Georgia Dome today when the Wolverines play Syracuse for a spot in Monday night’s championship game. He’ll be rooting for the Orange, right?

Yes. Fisher is close friends with Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim.

But he’ll also pull for Michigan. Fisher is good friends with coach John Beilein as well, and Travis Conlan, a point guard on Fisher’s Michigan teams in the mid-90s, is the director of operations.

“It’s called life,” says Fisher, 68. “Sometimes things don’t go the way you think they should … Things happen. But then you do what we did. You make the best of what’s next. The best thing that’s happened to us has been the opportunity out here and this chapter in our lives that could not have been scripted as good as it has turned out for us.

“We’re fortunate to be where we are. That’s what I think about more than anything.”

Read what you will into his words. Either the events of October 1997 have genuinely been soothed by the balm of time, or Fisher resolutely is driving on the high road — practicing what he preaches to his players about not harboring the injustices, real or perceived, of the past.

Is he bitter?

“I think deep down he is,” Bill Frieder says, “simply because he felt he did a great job at Michigan. He thought it was wrong the way they handled the whole thing. I think it still gnaws at him.”